The Wrecker Medic
by obi-glasses
Summary: TFP: "Ambulon- well, he was a nice kid, ya'know? Sweet little regular-troop medic, kinda on the big side for a medic and an Autobot but otherwise all right." One-shot.


_This one stuck in my head and refused to let go until I had it all written out. I wish I could have turned this one into a multiparter but alas, tis not to be. Enjoy, and please review!_

o0o

Ambulon- well, he was a nice kid, ya'know? Sweet little regular-troop medic, kinda on the big side for a medic and an Autobot but otherwise all right. He's got this shoot-anything needle hooked up to a tank on his back that lets him inject pretty much anybody with pretty much anything, but lately he's been using a high-potency aci- But this isn't about his armament.

So how we met him? He was at the Delphi base, treating the wounded there that resulted from the 'Cons trying to get at the massive energon deposits. We arrived there to serve as backup for the Wrecker base and we, uh, got kind of lost. So we (We being the crew of the Eight Track, which is about 15 or 16 including Springer and Impactor and Pyro) crashed near Delphi. As Ambulon tells it, Delphi was already spooked to the Pit from all the shooting going on and we didn't exactly, ah, help. So nobody came out to help us, and nobody sent a commline either because they were playing dead very well.

So about three or four rotations go by, and we can't for the lives of us get out of the damn ship because of all the fragging _snow-_ Primus, I _hate _snow!- and Delphi starts to relax a little, right? And Ambulon, he gets tired of waiting for what he is assuming is a Decepticon ship to get the frag back up and shoot up Delphi. So he tromps the couple of k-units out to our ship and bangs on the door like a little afthead. I answer it and he falls flat on his skidplat with surprise- and that's how we met Ambulon.

How we got him with the Wreckers is a story indeed- We don't have that much time, though. That's sad. I bet you'd like to hear that sometime.

But anyways- So Ambulon's been with our crew for a while, right? He's settled in, he's making himself useful, being a pretty good doc if I do say so myself. We're on Lanarq, which is an Autobot planet in Decepticon territory, and we get caught by 'Cons. Typical sol for a Wrecker team.

So Overlord (the leader of the Con squad in this part of space) takes us to the underground base on Lanarq. Turns out the indigenous lifeforms have turned coat on us and are now working for the 'Cons, which is how we got caught. It's me, Ambulon and Impactor, and Overlord decides to take Impactor to a different room to 'extract information' from him. The extraction room is hooked up to ours by ventilation shafts, so when Impactor starts screaming and bleeding we can hear and smell it. Ambulon.. the poor kid, he'd never been so close and yet so far away from something like that. He just shoved himself as far into a corner as he could and put his servos over his audios.

By the time we got out Impactor was dead- bled out, from what we saw, although we couldn't take his frame back with us. It.. seeing Impactor, one of the best guys in the Wreckers, it changed the Doc somehow. He was like a tornado when we were beating our way out- slicing and dicing instead of just knocking Cons out.

He was mostly recovered by the time we found Earth- we were so fragging happy when we found Optimus and Wheeljack and even _Bulkhead,_ the little turncoat, it was one of the most joyous reunions I've ever had the honor of being part of, and then Ambulon starts a scream-fest with the local medic Ratchet. It was dually entertaining and terrifying, and I have no shame in admitting I turned tail and ran. That's the smart thing to do when that kind of slag hits the fan.

Anyways, by the time everything had sort-of calmed down, the local Cons were attacking our ship and we were all called back, and Prime called most of his team out to help. Which included Ratchet. We were fighting off Troopers and then.. Primus, I'll never forget this- we all hear this unholy _scream._ It's not anybody I recongize so at first I didn't react, but it didn't stop- it just kept spiralling higher and louder and higher until it hit a note of pure agony, and then it just stopped like someone had flicked a switch.

You don't hear that sort of thing on a battlefield like that often so I quickly ended my little duel and ran to the source of the noise- turns out..

...turns out it's the sweet little medic, who's got his needle imbedded in a Con trooper's stomach- Ambulon normally goes for the head or the chest, to end it fast, and he doesn't go all the way through so that his acid won't spill out. But he went through the stomach, and he went all the way through and his servo was on the trooper's neck and Primus, those _optics._ I had never _seen _energon-lust like that on Ambulon's face. He was enjoying his kill, savoring the screaming, but when he turned to look at Ratchet- he too had heard the shouting- I could see shame and remorse in there too.

Ratchet.. now, Ratchet's got his own share of issues, from what Bulkhead tells me, but he knows better than to kill anybot, even a Con, like that. And he says- and he told me he regretted this immensely later- "What's wrong with you?"

Now, why was that the wrong thing to say, you ask? Simple.

"Don't you _dare _ask me what's wrong with me!" Ambulon screams. "You did the exact same thing! The _exact same thing!_"

"That was different," Ratchet snaps back. "That was for _information,_ I was mentally impaired, and I was damn well going to kill him fast, not gut him, bleed him and burn him like a- a- Decepticon! For frag's sake, you rage at me about Overlord and what he did to Impactor and then- and then.." and the Autobot medic gestures to the dead trooper in front of us.

Ambulon starts to realize what he's done, and as he looks down at the mess of slag before him I can.. I _could _see him starting to hate himself, right then and there. And he pulled out his needle, encrusted with guts and energon and acid, and he turned it on himself so fast only Ratchet saw it coming. The Autobot medic tackled him, and we hauled Ambulon back together, screaming and kicking.

But we need a medic. We need _Ambulon._

...

...

.. So, Ambulon's had his memory wiped, all the way back to before Impactor's death. And we're back in space. And, well, I don't think any of us are ever going to be the same again.

Just goes to prove, war is hell.


End file.
